Hi Junesun,

You wrote:

I believe this approach would also work out well for Thai and take away a major stumbling block for people interested in learning Thai but afraid of learning a new alphabet. If you'd like to try it, make a page similar to Modern Greek/Writing lessons plan listing as many suitable words and names as you can think of and their transliteration and inform me. I'll gladly help you by finding a good order to introduce letters and starting to write the lessons. Deal?

Very kind of you, and it sounds excellent - unfortunately I know almost no Thai at this stage! I was just incorporating other people's material. I speak Indonesian (which uses the Roman alphabet) and help out elsewhere where I can...

You could try Tony Mortlock of this version, which is the source for Thai/Adding vocabulary with word association (as explained on the talk page). I don't know if Tony has studied the Thai script, but he may be interested in helping, or directing you to someone else. His email is at the bottom of his page.

I have an additional selfish reason for wanting to see the Thai pages develop as I wish to start learning Thai sometime in the next year or so, in preparation for going there.

I've read (eslcafe.com forums) that it's easy to buy material in Thailand to help learn to make the letters. So, when I eventually get there I may be in a better position to help.

Look forward to further collaboration... --Singkong2005 00:59, 17 August 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hi Junesun,

My name is Borpit.I'm Thai.And I'd like to help you about Thai alphabet. But I don't know the meaning of letter-by-letter transliteration.

Yours sincerely,Borpit.202.57.146.225 16:41, 17 August 2006 (UTC)Talk:BpitkReply

You can use my ThaiEncoder to input Thai alphabet. thaiencoder

I developed it in JavaScript(originally for pda&smartphone).

Thai Dictionary links... lexitron longdo

Have you ever tried Thai karaoke (like this sample)

--Bpitk

Thank you very much for your help! I haven't yet tried Thai Karaoke, but Karaoke has helped me to improve my knowledge of French and Chinese, so I will probably use it once I have a solid foundation knowledge of the language. Creating lessons for the Thai script will be partly autotherapy.

Junesun 18:47, 19 August 2006 (UTC)Reply

Please don't blame me for doing something with your babel.I'm practicing with wikibabel.I wish you will feel good with this one.--Bpitk 20 August 2006

Hi Junesun,

Was new page patrolling and saw "Lesson 5". Was giggling at the words you used for examples of "Phi". Nice work!

--SB_Johnny | ^talk 18:12, 19 August 2006 (UTC)Reply

I'm glad you like the lessons. I'm trying to give people an easy introduction to the Greek alphabet, since I know from personal experience that it's incredibly hard to learn a script when you're just given a table showing the letters. I'm hoping to encourage the development of similar lessons for other scripts, too (right now Arabic and Thai because of personal interests). Seeing that the vast majority of commercially-available textbooks just give students a table of letters to memorise, Wikibooks could easily excel in this and become the place to go for tortured language students.

A similar step-by-step approach is successful in regular language lessons, too. See my BLL German course and the page Help: Bite-sized language lessons, which is an explanation of the didactic idea behind it. Also, you might be interested to know that I'm currently running a pledge concerning language-teaching on Wikibooks, hoping to get more people involved.

Junesun 18:47, 19 August 2006 (UTC)Reply

Ugh. My German is so rusty that I'm not sure I could even say "My German is rusty" in German. You might get some people involved at Wikiversity though... at least one of the admins is in Germany. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 20:08, 19 August 2006 (UTC)Reply

I second SB Johnny's comments. Great work on Greek and Thai, will look at Arabic later... This is a fantastic way to teach the scripts. Really interesting approach. I'm supposed to be focusing on other things (not even supposed to be on the computer now...) but will follow with interest and help where I can, at least in Indonesian, Thai & Arabic, as I speak the first and want to learn the other two. --Singkong2005 01:55, 20 August 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hi.I'm new here.Do you have any example book titles I can look over them and possibly create some? -- ~ * Cute 1 4 u |talk to me! * ~ 22:01, 23 August 2006 (UTC)Reply

• Re the Writing lessons plan pages, I think it would be helpful to link them from the main page for the language. (Note: I just realised you actually have linked them... missed that somehow, sorry. --03:59, 25 August 2006 (UTC)) I linked Thai/Writing lessons plan from Thai. Possibly it should go under a "teacher's resources" or "contributor's guide" heading. In the short term, some of this material can still be useful to learners. Also, contributors might not be aware of the page unless it's linked from the front.

• Re the word propadeutic, I think very few people will know this word, so perhaps it could be expressed differently? Does it just mean preparatory?

• FYI: I've added a few things to How to learn a language, including a section "Notes for teachers" which might be moved to How to Teach a Language when it is more developed.

--Singkong2005 03:17, 25 August 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hi Junesun!

I recently found your lessons on reading, writing and pronouncing Korean. Are you planning to update these lessons at some time? I think they're very good for someone who has no prior knowledge of the language (like me). Or do you know any other online resources for learning Korean? (Michael Drüing 11:16, 8 November 2006 (UTC))Reply

Hi! I'm glad you find the lessons useful. I decided to discontinue working on Wikibook projects because I can't find other contributors to my projects (my method to learn German easily, Quick and dirty guide to Esperanto, Modern Greek writing and language lessons, Learn to read write and pronounce Korean, Learn to read write and pronounce Arabic, Learn to read write and pronounce Thai) and if I am to do all the work I may just as well put it on my own website (currently migrating to a new server). If you like, send me an e-mail and I'll message you when I've written the rest of the Korean lessons there.

Junesun 20:35, 13 November 2006 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, forgot to mention it here, but a much improved version of the lessons is now available at my site on language learning. I already completed lesson 4 there, which is incomplete here (not to mention that somebody is now editing the lessons here destroying the methology and deleting exercise possibilities), and I am hoping to post the last two lessons on my site soon. Also, I have found some Korean speakers who are recording words for me, so that you will have some samples to base your pronunciation on, instead of just descriptions. Junesun 20:41, 12 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm sorry to read that you think my edits are destroying the methodology and deleting the exercise possibilities. You clearly had stated that you were not going to continue to work on the lessons, so I didn't think to ask you about your vision before digging in. If you're still insterested in collaborating here, let me know and I'd be happy to help. Rodasmith 02:36, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I described the concept on the Korean talk page and at Korean/Writing lessons plan. The lesson plan can be found at Korean/Writing lessons plan 2, but who cares about methodology or lesson plans here. Basically, it's about introducing one letter at a time followed by exercises, so that people get eased into reading and writing the script. It was a lot of work to find suitable letters and words for the first lesson, but now each new letter opens up an abundance of words for practise and each practise word also re-inforces the letters that students have already learned. Feedback on this method has been awesome.

I dislike that you are moving in the direction of introducing more letters and providing less exercise opportunities again, since the whole purpose of the course was to be a counter-weight to that approach which unfortunately is very popular with textbook authors. There can never be enough exercises, as gifted students can just skip the rest of the exercises as soon as they feel comfortable and for challenged students even 50 exercises on the same topic may not be enough. I also dislike that you removed my announcement twice, since students have a right to know that the course on Wikibooks isn't going anywhere soon, so that they don't have to come back to check all the time. Also, seeing that I did all the work of creating the lessons, the GNU license affords me attribution. I do like the diagrams you added to the lessons. Now I have invested too much in developing and promoting the course on my own site though and I'm also more acutely aware of all the limitations Wikibooks puts on course development, so I won't continue the course here.

Junesun 09:11, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, I hadn't seen Korean/Writing lessons plan before now, but, now having read it, I take no issue with the methodology. It will be quite easy to revise my edits to align with that methodology.

Regarding the removal of the announcement, the first announcement[1] was a very ugly advertising rant posted by an anonymous user. When I checked the destination of the link, I found that no new material was actually added to that site, so I removed the rant. The second announcement I removed (see [2]) inaccurately claimed that you are the only person working on the project and that you had no community support, it advertised a non-WikiMedia site, and it was a talk-page-style comment writted directly on a course module. It was better suited for the talk page, so I moved it there. At best, it may be OK to add a short link to your site in a ==External links== section on Korean/RWP, similar to the one there now but without the skeptical "The future of this course is unclear". Rodasmith 16:20, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi , saw your comment on the Devanagiri script article requesting for a tutorial on how to write in devanagiri Came across this http://www.avashy.com/hindiscripttutor.htm

(Cant sign in because I do not have an account but I have a English Wikipeida account named Deepak D'Souza . Just in case you need any thing from me you can leave a message there or email me at ddyaar@gmail.com)

Hey, thanks for giving me that link. I still think that there should be an easier way to learn the script though; this website is nicely made but it still boils down to learning all the letters before you can read anything. My script tutorials have you reading right from the beginning and a lot of people have told me that they are a child's play to follow through to where you know all letters. Have a look at www.learnlangs.com/RWP/Korean to see what I consider an easy approach. -- Junesun 16:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I saw your message on the talk page. I can understand your concerns about using Wikibooks for learning languages but it must be possible. Unfortunately the English Wikibook has been desserted for some time and I've taken the decision to revamp it but this is a huge project involving several different English books (English, ESL, Teaching ESL, Business English and a book I am writing for intermediate English students). The one thing you probably don't have to worry about is people creating pages which don't blend in with the other part of the book - because nobody seems to edit this book anyway! I wish you well but wish people would stay at Wikibooks and help make it better. Xania ^talk 21:03, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

This has been exactly my experience: nobody seems to edit any book anyway. The books are all either abandoned or one-person efforts. And if you're going to have to do all the work of writing a book on your own, why not do it in a medium that's better suited for teaching, where you'll receive all the recognition and where nobody can one day come along and mess things up while you're not looking. Finding able contributors for Wikibooks is a lost quest. I tried too many times. For writing lessons for Arabic, Devanagari and Thai for example. Also for the German course at BLL German - the current German wikibook is a joke, even though it got the Book of the Month award. Introducing up to 200 new words per lesson (I counted them once in lesson 2), plenty of grammar and a minuscule amount of exercises, many of which are undoable because they require knowledge of concepts that haven't been introduced yet. I wanted to make a difference there. I created lessons and plans for more, even a separate page going into a lot of detail on how anybody can contribute to the course (BLL German/Contributing). Absolutely nobody showed up except to do minor corrections to the formatting and it's been almost a year. For Modern Greek I actually found two people who would help create lessons, but shortly after I developed a decent lesson plan they disappeared. Wikibooks is not the way to go if you actually want to complete a good course and there isn't a single language course on it that I would recommend for actual studying. I gave a talk on Wikibooks at the Wikimania conference in Boston last summer and drew some interest, but nothing has changed. Junesun 09:36, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Junesun, I replied to your post on Talk:English, but thought you may also be interested in this: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Kana/quiz . Wikiversity uses a "quiz" extension to help with interactive exercises. If it would help in building courses, we may be able to get that extension installed here. Rodasmith 22:05, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I suggested the development of exercise extensions. That would at least make Wikibooks somewhat of an alternative to web pages for non-programmers, though it will never reach all possibilities of course web pages created by experienced programmers, such as the courses on Lernu. The other problems still remain though, especially the problem that most self-proclaimed course writers don't even know they should be providing exercises. Junesun 09:36, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi Junesun. Thanks for your role in making Miskito a featured book. I'm flattered! I already expressed my thanks generically on the language bookshelf talk page, but thought I should tell you personally too. If you have any other thoughts (positive or critical) about the course I'd enjoy discussing it, and our ideas about language teaching/learning and the Wikibook language courses, with you. I certainly agree with your general appraisal of most of the "books" (ahem) there at the moment, and share your concern that something be done to improve them. I hope that the project I have started, of which I view the Miskito course as just a part and a first step, will contribute to that.

I don't know if you're interested but I seem to have triggered off a discussion (which I hope will be constructive) on the bookshelf talk page about how the languages are listed there. Since only one other person has taken part so far, you might be interested in saying something to help broaden the discussion and contribute your opinion, if you have one.

Finally, I just read your user page and I felt very sympathetic with the feeling you express in the last line: "I used to also be involved in Wikipedia (user name: Junesun), but I'm fed up with seeing my hard work deleted by adolescent boys with too much power on their hands." I also work in Wikipedia, and oh yes, I know what you mean! However, there are also people there with whom it is worth collaborating, so perhaps you have to take the good with the bad. Cheers, Alan --A R King 11:45, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I read on the Languages bookshelf talkpage that you're somewhat of an expert. I wondered, if you have a few moments, if you could look at the Spanish Wikibook, to see if it fits the principles of pedagogics. It'd be interesting to see where I'm going right/wrong, how I might improve, and, most importantly, if someone could actually use it for practical learning. Thanks and kind regards, —Celestianpower ^háblame 20:04, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hey, it's so nice to hear that others are interested in providing quality language materials here, too. The Spanish Wikibook is quite good. The standard make-up of each lesson is good, the explanations are understandable, extra vocabulary and expressions that go with the topic (e. g. list of sports) have been chosen well and the exercises are very good for practising what was taught. However, most of the lessons appear to stand on their own, not incorporating what was taught before.

Things I would have done differently:

• try to re-use topics and words that you used in previous lessons. This will function as a natural review. Having introduced reflexive verbs in the first lesson, I might make the second lesson about daily activities (getting up, washing, brushing teeth, getting dressed, ...) as a lot of these verbs are reflexive in Romance languages. As new point of grammar I'd discuss the articles and the plural;
• alternatively, I'd make the second lesson about verbs that are conjugated like "llamarse" - not necessarily reflexive verbs but verbs that take exactly the same endings (maybe a text about further introductions, so you could re-use some phrases from lesson 1), this way students wouldn't have to learn a new conjugation yet. Seeing a regularity when starting to learn the language is more motivating than first having to learn irregularities. Or at least assure new language learners that there is a regularity to these endings, that they won't have to learn a new set for each verb;
• I also like to make one of the first lessons about "to be", since it's very versatile and useful, and a more basic part of grammar than reflexive verbs; however Spanish having two kinds of "to be" might affect this decision.
• lesson 2, you should explain about "primero" and other ordinal numbers before using them;
• rather than forcing lots of elementary grammar and three conjugations down the student's throat in lesson 3, I'd introduce these step by step in real lessons with dialogues and exercises;
• lesson 4 also introduces rather much grammar, especially seeing students haven't had the time to digest the grammar-only lesson 3.
• in lesson 5 you re-introduce reflexive verbs (gustarse), making it sound like it's a new type of verb. This is confusing.
• lesson 6 is fine. Maybe the dialogue could be made a bit longer without introducing too many new words. Had "necesitar" been taught before? I'm not really keeping track of the vocabulary taught, but you should.
• lesson 7 is the third time reflexive verbs are introduced. The combination of teaching reflexive verbs + daily activities + telling the time is something I have used in the past too, but then you can't put that lesson at the beginning of the course.
• the way the future is introduced in lesson 8 is good. However, I wouldn't add quite as much stuff about hotels etc. there - that could be used for additional lesson dialogues. The Activities part can stay, it's an additional way of practising "ir". I don't recall "poder" being taught (used for "¿Se puede fumar en el cuarto?"), so that needs to come at some point, hopefully in a different lesson.
• I don't see the future being used in any way in the dialogue of lesson 9. Maybe that dialogue would have been better used towards the beginning of the course, as it fits with the topic of introducing oneself. Lesson 9 should contain a dialogue in the future tense, as students dislike learning something they have no use for and also the more examples, the better. Don't forget to explain what the difference in usage between the future using "ir" and the future you are now teaching is. Just saying it's a "real future tense" doesn't help much.
• generally, provide a more complete list of essential vocabulary used, e. g. indicating that "Qué" is "What" and "Cuándo" is "When", etc., rather than leaving that to the user to guess from the example sentences;
• try to think about grammar explanations differently, e. g. instead of conveying "Now you are going to learn stem-changing verbs" you should convey "Weren't you thrown off by seeing 'quiero' instead of the expected 'quero' in the dialogue? The reason is ...";

Quite a lot of remarks, I know. I hope they will help improve the Spanish Wikibook. I don't speak Spanish well, drawing mostly on my Italian, Latin, French and Esperanto, but if you at some point create a lesson plan I'd like to have a look. I'd create one myself, but right now I need to focus on creating lessons for the company, so that I can pay my tuition fees.

Junesun 07:56, 10 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I would be interested in getting involved in this project. How can I plug in? ArielGlenn 00:49, 14 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Great! Please have a look at the lesson plan. None of the lessons have been written so far, so you can start with lesson 1. If you don't feel that you can prepare an entire lesson according to the "Bite-sized language lessons" concept, you can also just contribute a dialogue, a grammar explanation, exercises or the like. Junesun 07:33, 14 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Working on it now. It may be a few days before a rough draft goes up. I'll put some commentary on the talk page there as well. Thanks! ArielGlenn 05:27, 15 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi Junesun! I saw your request about improvement of Devanagari wikibook. Frankly speaking, I agree with what you have said above, that books are 1-man errand. The problem with wikibooks, that atleast I encountered, was that I would like to restructure the Hindi or Devanagari books - the current way is totally random - deciding first how to lay down every course, and then going ahead writing one by one, loosing interest in the middle because you realize no one else is writing anything and all subtitles are your work.

So, I am planning to write a new book about Devanagari. Right now I am little busy, since my exams are going on. If you are still interested in this project, I would really like your help in guiding me through, since I am just an engineer, no language expert.

By the way, ich lebe in Deutschland. ich studiere Chemie im Universität Stuttgart, und ich verstehe nur ein bißen Deutsch.

viele Grüße,

--Anupamsr 19:49, 9 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

Here, have a look at the sample. Please provide any comments if you have. The next lesson may take some time, because my exams are going on... as I said...--Anupamsr 20:59, 9 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi Anupamsr! I'm glad that you're getting involved in the Devanagari course. So far, your work looks very good. I would eventually put the explanation about how reading works into the first reading lesson.

If you want to teach people how to read Devanagari similar to how I taught them how to read the Greek alphabet or Korean at [3], which is probably the most painless method there is, here are the steps you will need:

1. collect a large amount of Hindi words that are similar to English ones. Country names, city names, personal names, brand names and anything goes, just have a look at the words I chose for my courses. The important thing is that the user will recognize the word after reading it. E. g. if he reads "lu-n-du-n", he'd recognize that that's the word for "London", especially if you provide "capital in Europe" as a hint. (I'm not claiming that that's the word for London, I don't know any Hindi)
2. identify the words that only have very few distinct letters when written in Devanagari, e. g. "papa" would only have two and "banana" only three.
3. introduce letters one by one (the combinations of K that you posted are a good start), but in such a way that students can read those words from step 2 as soon as possible. Give them as many words as possible for practice.

I would be glad to help you plan this, as I myself would like to be able to read Devanagari. Once you have a list of words, just let me know and I'll help you with the rest of the steps.

Judith

Thanks for the heads-up! Right now my exams are going on. I will complete writing all of this as soon as I get time.--Anupamsr 03:36, 12 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm sorry to bother you with this. But would it be possible for you to look at the exercises that I have done for the Zulu book. All I'd like is feedback in terms of the balance of the exercises. Also I've used a measure of revision in some of the later exercises, by asking questions that were introduced in subsequent chapters. Is this useful or simply demoralising? Any input would be much appreciated. --IKnowNothing (talk) 21:32, 24 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

I think the exercises are fine, very balanced. I particularly like that you asked the student to interact ("how would you respond...") instead of just asking for translations. When you're introducing conjugations and the like, fill-in-the-blank exercises and spot-the-mistake exercises are also very effective, but unfortunately Wikibooks is very limiting in what kind of exercises it allows you to create. By the way, thank you very much for creating a lesson in the Modern Greek Wikibook according to the lesson plan I wrote up! I had despaired to ever see anybody besides me contribute to that... Junesun (talk) 22:26, 26 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

I've made a first cut at Lesson 1. It's very rough right now, but if you want to modify it. Feel free. --Retropunk (talk) 07:01, 17 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

We have a conversation on lesson structure at Talk:Japanese#A_proposed_outline, your input would be greatly appreciated. --Retropunk (talk) 10:29, 16 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

I noticed that you contribute also to the Greek wiki books...Very glad to see you here. Regards Glavkos (talk) 18:40, 20 October 2009 (UTC)Reply